'Help' is a prayer that is always answered.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.

... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]

Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.

Nothing heals us like letting people know our scariest parts: When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it's like they are holding the baby of you.

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda.

Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.

You cannot con an honest man.

What are you most thankful for?” she asked.My reply came easily. “Being too blessed to have any hope of answering that question.

An awareness of mortality is a heavy price to pay for sentience

So, I certainly subscribe to what Bette said about acting being very hard work.

People want more real artistes. They want girls who can actually sing and play an instrument and write their own songs - that's not fake and manufactured anymore".

Intellectual ''work'' is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

I think walking is very useful, like sleeping and dreaming, as something that's important to my ability to write.

If you go to Minnesota in January, you should know that it's gonna be cold. You don't panic when the thermometer falls below zero.

We all just took the bookstore at its word, because if you couldn't trust a bookstore, what could you trust?

So please ask yourself: What would I do if I weren't afraid? And then go do it.